


Winning the Battle & Losing the War (or: how Tony finally got Clint to move out of his apartment)

by kizuke



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Clint doesn't trust people until they're friends with his dog, Clint is unreasonably attached to his apartment, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Spoilers for the Marvel Now! Hawkeye comics (up to issue #13)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:17:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kizuke/pseuds/kizuke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's got a life outside of the Avengers, okay, and he's not going to give it up without a fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winning the Battle & Losing the War (or: how Tony finally got Clint to move out of his apartment)

It's just, one moment Tony Stark doesn't even know Clint's name, and the next he wants Clint to move into his house. Clint's not that kind of guy, and besides, he likes his apartment in Bed-Stuy. It's, well, it's his. But Tony asks about five times and it's kind of getting to him.  
  
Tony throws the wire ends down in disgust. "Let me buy you a new one, Katniss. Or, you know, come stay in the Tower. I'll give you your own floor. I can have the elevator lead to your home theatre."  
  
Clint sighs. "No, dude, we've been over this." He picks up a red wire, running a finger down its length to the tangled mass of audiovisual cable. "I've got a place, you know this, you're in it. And I've got a home entertainment system, you know this, you've been neck-deep in it for half an hour."  
  
"Fine," says Tony, stilted. “Offer’s open though. If you ever want to, I don’t know, take the hobbits to Isengard or whatever, just let me know, we’ll fix something up, as long as you don’t shoot me off the tower–”  
  
"Wanna get pizza?" Clint cuts in, throwing the cable down after all. The disgruntled curl to Tony's lip slips away as Lucky bounds in from the kitchen, ears perked, and screeches happily to a halt at their feet.  
  
"Guess that's a yes from you," Clint laughs, and heaves himself up to get the phone. Tony squats ungainfully to scratch Lucky behind the ear.  
  
When the doorbell rings, though, it's not pizza; it's Happy with a pristine set of audiovisual cables and a roll of twist-tie. "Hey, Hogan," says Clint slowly, rubbing his nose, but decides to accept the stuff. He props his hip against the doorframe. "Wanna come in for pizza? Should be here soon."  
  
"Nah, I'm good, got the rest of the night off for a date," says Happy with a grin. "You two have fun."  
  
"The guts of my stupid-shit home ent system are real good fun," Clint complains after him, waving and shutting the door.  
  
They're watching Top Gear by the time the pizza actually arrives, though. Tony slices pepperoni and pineapples and cheese animatedly through the air as he rails on about the piece of crap shit Jeremy Clarkson's riding around the town. Lucky sprawls heavily over Tony's feet, scarfing down his own slice, and Tony doesn't even pause.  
  
In the morning, they wake up in mild surprise on the couch – or, in Clint's case, mostly off the couch – television replaying the Brave DVD menu and Lucky curled up snuffling on the rug.  
  
Clint crawls to the kitchen to start the coffee while Tony burrows into the residual heat Clint leaves behind. Eventually, when there's enough caffeine in their veins, Clint makes breakfast to Tony's surprisingly decent shower-singing.  
  
"Bacooon," Tony drawls, pleased, towelling his hair in the doorway. He's borrowed a t-shirt and sweatpants and has slung his no doubt ridiculously expensive suit haphazardly over one arm.  
  
Clint grins at him, plating the eggs and setting them on the table. There's toast with slabs of butter melting merrily over them, and bacon, and eggs with crisp brown edges, and –  
  
"Avocado with arugula?" asks Tony, eyebrow raised. “Do you put them together for the alliteration?”  
  
"Kate," Clint explains, rolling his eyes fondly, "finally found two green things which I will eat, then she stocked so much of it in my fridge that I'm forced to have it every meal."  
  
Tony snorts a laugh at that, but he piles a forkful on top of his toast and bacon and takes a huge bite. "It's pretty good," he garbles through his mouthful. "So, Kate, that's your Young Avenger duckling, right?"  
  
"We're bros," says Clint. He laughs as Lucky patters in and puts his head on Tony's knee. Tony smoothes the fur between his ears before snagging a rasher for him. "She's great. Though she says she should be paid for babysitting me."  
  
Tony grins. "I like her already. I should switch allegiances, make her my go-to Hawkeye, we can condition you to eat your greens by awarding and withholding new Hawkeye tech."  
  
Clint points at him with his toast. "You are not allowed to be friends. It would be a disaster."  
  
His flat would burn down, at the very least, and then they'd fight over who got to build him a new one. Tony would win and then Kate would insist on doing the furnishing and then he'd have raw silk wallpaper and wonder when his life had gone so wrong, and the answer would be this very moment when he'd failed to prevent them from associating.  
  
Tony hums at him noncommittally. Clint narrows his eyes at Tony, but lets it go as he starts coming up with terrible Brave-based archer jokes for Clint to groan at theatrically.  
  
"Alright, I gotta go, Merida." Tony says finally, when the dishes are loaded and he's drawn out another mug of coffee as long as he could. "It's been great, let’s do this again. But, Clint, you should come to the tower–"  
  
"Aw, dude," Clint says, abruptly feeling strangely disappointed.  
  
"– on Thursday, we'll have an Avengers movie night, there'll be popcorn, it'll be great," Tony barrels on quickly.  
  
"Yeah?" It does sound good, actually, so he says okay. He watches Tony Stark, billionaire, saunter down his hall towards the stairs in sweatpants and an old t-shirt with a rumpled suit slung over his shoulder and shakes his head, smiling. What even is his life?

*

Clint's the only Avenger who hasn't got a Tower floor, but surprisingly enough after that night Tony doesn't bring it up a sixth time. He just leaves whatever borrowed clothes in his guest room closet so that Clint can wear them home again – when he watches too many movies and falls asleep on the rec room couch, or after passing out there post-mission debrief.  
  
So the penthouse guest room's sort of Clint's, but Clint knows a compromise when he sees one and doesn't comment. He stashes a couple of uniforms and a spare bow in the closet.  
  
Avengers movie nights kind of become a thing when most of them are in town, but the two of them also just hang sometimes. They have take-out and beer and poke fun at movies, or in the day they go to eat pizza or diner burgers or Thai or Chinese in tiny hole-in-the-wall places around the city. Clint knows all the good ones with shit service and Tony knows all the crap ones with amazing service, for whatever reason.  
  
So, yeah, he sees Tony a lot more after that time, and they're friends. But he doesn't stay in the Tower, so he's surprised when Cap calls one evening and says urgently, "Clint, we need you to come in."  
  
"What? Sorry, my buzzer didn't sound, I didn't – what's going on, where are we assembling?"  
  
"No, it's Tony," says Cap, frustrated. "He's locked himself in his lab and isn't letting anyone in. It's been two days already, and JARVIS says he hasn't eaten or slept."  
  
"Uh," he says intelligently, stuck halfway into a t-shirt. "Right. What do you want me for?"  
  
"We think you're most likely to be able to talk him down. Please."  
  
"Oka-ay," he says, slowly. "I'll be right over."

*  
  
He drops into the lab from a vent with a container of xiao long bao from last week's dim sum place. Tony startles, badly, and fumbles his screwdriver, which drops onto his foot and rolls away. It'd be funny if Tony didn't look like death frozen over.  
  
"Sorry," Clint yells over the dulcet tones of AC/DC, and picks the screwdriver up. It's a good thing it wasn't a welding torch or something. He eyes the workbench, but nowhere really seems safe, so he holds on to the screwdriver and sets the food on the floor by Tony's feet. "I brought food!"  
  
"Uh, thanks," Tony says, clearly not all there yet. He sits down, picks up the food, then stares at it like he doesn't know what it is. Clint leaves him to figure it out, extracting a tea bag from his pocket to make a truly awful mug of green tea from tepid water.  
  
"You, uh, put it in your mouth," he tells Tony, sitting down and sliding the mug over.  
  
"I know that," Tony snaps. He cracks the container open. As he's setting the plastic cover aside, condensation-side-up, Clint leans over and steals one. He tips his head back and sticks the entire thing in his mouth, peeling the aluminium bottom away at the last moment. Soup floods his mouth pleasantly and he hums happily. Dim sum is the fucking best.  
  
Once Tony's got one into his mouth, he scarfs the rest down in short order, then drinks the tea with a disgusted twist of his mouth. "Great, now I'm starving, thanks a lot," he complains, but makes no move to get up. Clint rolls the screwdriver between his fingers and waits.  
  
"Pepper broke up with me," Tony says quietly.  
  
"Wanna talk about it?"  
  
"Fuck no," – with vehemence.  
  
"Wanna go get drunk?"  
  
"Yeah, let's go," says Tony, dusting off the seat of his pants.

*  
  
The next afternoon-morning, Tony's dead to the world in bed and Clint's nursing a godawful hangover at the communal kitchen table. Banner gets him a cup of coffee stronger than sin.  
  
"I guess you guys are too big to fit in the vents," Clint says finally, peering up at Cap. He refuses to raise his head from the table, it's too much. "I thought it'd be harder than that to get him out, the way you sold it. Guess Tasha'd do it if she were around." She’s away on a mission, and Thor’s still off being an alien god in Asgard.  
  
"No," says Cap slowly, "that really wouldn't work out so great."  
  
"Usually Pepper gets him out of his cave, but she has to yell and a lot of threats are involved," Banner explains, "and he's never put the workshop into full lockdown like that. We asked him to come out and eat through the glass, but he turned up the volume until we couldn't yell over it, and then when we made a strategic retreat for a while he locked the entrances to the area."  
  
"I'm pretty sure if Natasha went in she'd have to knock him out to get him to leave," Cap sighs.  
  
Clint winces at the thought. "I don't get it. I don't even live here, I thought you guys probably knew how to do this stuff better than me. I just brought food."  
  
"Colonel Rhodes doesn't live here, either," Cap points out, "but I don't think any of us know Tony as well as he does."  
  
"Guess not," says Clint, shrugging. He's had worse jobs than Stark-wrangling, anyway.  
  
He contemplates making his way home in this state and actually shudders. "I think I'll just crawl back upstairs and sleep some more," he mumbles, tossing back the dregs of his coffee. Cap passes him a glass of water and puts his coffee mug in the sink.  
  
Clint takes a few steps out of the kitchen, then doubles back to grab another glass of water and a couple of painkillers. He sets them by Tony's bed and pulls off Tony's shoes and socks, leaving his feet dangling over the edge of the bed. The light of the arc reactor seeps faintly through the blanket he tossed over Tony's prone form. He shakes his head, sighing, and pads out, shutting the door behind him.  
  
He'd meant to go back to bed, but then he yelps as he remembers – Lucky has got to be going crazy by now. And, yeah, when he cracks his apartment door open later Lucky's there, whining all the way to the kitchen until Clint feeds him, and then whining him out the door again for a walk. "Okay, okay, okay, sorry," Clint groans, quickly grabbing a few things and stuffing them into a duffle bag.

A long, slightly meandering couple of hours later, they’re back at Stark Tower. Clint dumps his stuff in his guest room. He thinks that Lucky’s following him, right until he hears a muffled yelp and delighted barking from outside.

Lucky’s got into Tony’s room somehow, has apparently jumped on him in his sleep, and is now licking his face enthusiastically. Clint groans, scrubbing his face. “Sorry,” he mumbles, but Tony only huffs out a laugh and scratches the damn dog behind an ear just the way he likes. “You know you’re rewarding bad behaviour,” Clint says weakly, but doesn’t move to stop it. It was a good move, bringing the dog.

He’s a huge hit with the guys, of course. They let him leap up and slobber all over them. When Tasha gets back in the evening, though, he’s a totally different dog – sits quietly beside her and is quite content to let her rest a hand on his soft head all throughout dinner. Later, they all crowd around one of Tony’s wide-screens and watch _Doctor Who_. Tony lays his feet in Clint’s lap silently and lets Tasha run careful fingers through his hair. Steve’s got dog all over his crossed legs, Lucky’s tail brushing Bruce’s thigh on occasion, and it’s all – fine. Comfortable.

It’s well into the night when Clint makes Tony drag his weary feet into his bedroom and collapse into bed. “You wanna sleep here tonight?” he asks Lucky, who hops nimbly up onto the bed and curls around Tony’s feet in response. “Alright. Good boy,” he smiles, ruffling Lucky’s fur. He settles the covers around Tony’s shoulders.

“Stay,” Tony mumbles, but a moment later he’s out like a light. Clint shakes his head, pulling the door to on his way out. Tony’s been quiet and still all evening, and it makes Clint feel completely off-kilter.

He gets the dog food and bowl from his bag and sets it out in the kitchen so that Lucky won’t wake him for food at six in the morning, then spends a good half-hour getting acquainted with the ceiling before he finally falls asleep.

The next afternoon, when he follows Tony into the workshop and curls up in a beat-up armchair with coffee and a book, Tony fiddles with a screwdriver and says, “You staying, then?”

“Yeah, just for a bit,” Clint mumbles noncommittally, and turns the page.

* 

It’s a good week before Tony’s acting properly enough – bantering easily, smiling sometimes in a way that actually reaches his eyes – that Clint is comfortable leaving. He’s felt antsy and restless from the third day at the Tower, worked most of it out of his system in long runs with the dog in the mornings and late-afternoon trips to Tony’s giant gym, but now that he feels more settled about Tony he’s physically aching to get home again.

He saunters into the workshop, duffle bag slung over a shoulder and Lucky at his side. “Wanna get lunch?” he asks, and knows that Tony’s got it when his eyes shift quickly to the duffle and back to Clint.

“Yeah,” Tony says, slightly subdued, but he’s waving his hands animatedly over a burrito half an hour later so Clint figures they’re okay.

“Hey, so, come check out the new pasta place with me sometime,” he says at the foot of the Tower. They’d been walking past the site for a month now, and it was supposed to have finally opened a couple days ago.

“Sure," Tony says. He crouches down to pat Lucky once more, then waves as he slips back into the Tower.

Clint watches through the glass doors until he gets into the private elevator, then tugs on Lucky's leash. "C'mon, boy, we're going home."

*

The apartment is dim and silent when they get there. Clint flops on the couch for a bit, then showers, then starts a load of laundry and cleans a few things out of his fridge. When it’s late enough, he makes his way to the roof – it’s grill night today, and the building’s out in full force. There’s beer and enough sausages even for Lucky, and for Kate, who’s appeared out of the night to lean against the parapet with him.

“Hey, Hawkeye,” she says, nudging up against him.

“Hey, Hawkeye,” he grins.

They’re silent for a while, looking at their people milling in concentric circles around the grill, Lucky weaving between their feet and generally making a nuisance of himself. “So,” says Kate finally, “I missed you this last week.”

“I was at Tony’s,” he explains. “Fighting fires.”

“Is that what they call it nowadays?” She slants a sly grin at him.

“Aw, Kate.” Clint rolls his eyes, beer dangling between his fingers. “He and Pepper broke up. He was pretty beat up about it. Didn’t feel right leaving him alone.”

“Yeah?” She takes another good look at him, eyes wide in sympathy now. “I’m sorry.”

Clint takes a swig of his beer. “Me too.”

“I mean, I get it, but it must’ve sucked for you.”

“Uh. What? No. Why?”

She squints at him. “Are we not talking about your feelings? Is this a manly man thing?”

“What feelings,” says Clint flatly.

“Your great unrequited emotional boner for Anthony Edward Stark.”

What. “What?”

“Great. Emotional. Unrequi–”

“ _Okay_ , Kate, god, I get that. Why do you think I’m in – with Tony _Stark_?”

“You’ve been bro-dating,” she says, counting it off on her fingers. “You have a room in his house with a crap ton of your stuff in it. You’ve memorised his pizza order. You brought Lucky to his place.”

Clint interrupts. “ _You_ have a crap ton of stuff in my house, and I know _your_ pizza order, and you stole Lucky that one time–”

Kate just huffs at him and carries on. “You talk about him constantly. You get that look in your eye, Clint, don’t front, I know that look, and finally, most tellingly, you actually call him. You don’t call _anyone_ , and we’re _family_ , Clint, of course you know my pizza order.”

“The Avengers are kind of like a family,” Clint tries, but he sure as hell doesn’t know Thor’s pizza order, or Cap’s, or Banne– Bruce’s, and yeah, he hadn’t really started to think of them as Steve and Bruce until the other night when they were all crammed protectively into couches around him and Tony and Tasha.

“Yeah, okay,” he says, finally. “I do. Care about him, I mean. He got under my skin pretty quick. But–”

Kate just looks at him, waiting. She brushes the condensation off her beer, flicking it off her graceful calloused fingers, and takes another long drink.

“But it’s not – you know, I can see it, now. We could totally do it, it might even be a good thing. But I don’t, I mean, I–”

“You’d hit that,” she says, eyes drifting back to the grill.

“Yeah. But I guess I won’t.”

*

It’s weird, though, how he can’t un-see the new perspective. One moment they’re eating pasta and talking shit about Doctor Doom and the next he’s caught on Tony’s eyelashes and the curve of his cheek. Then they’re arguing about music, then Clint’s hands are itching to trace the outline of the arc reactor through his t-shirt. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.

 _No_. It’s fine, for the most part. So he fixates a little bit on Tony’s fingers now, but this will pass. It generally does. Clint hadn’t even noticed the feelings until Kate, so they clearly don’t have that much power over him. Nothing has changed, not really. Yeah, a possibility opened up, but he’s shut it down.

It isn’t really a possibility, anyway. Tony’s just a couple months out from the longest relationship of his life. He’s probably not looking for a new one right now. Clint’s shit at relationships anyway – and so is Tony – and while the sex would probably be spectacular, Clint’s not going to be an awkward rebound. He likes what they have. It’s a solid thing in his life, this friendship, and he doesn’t want to tangle it beyond repair. Just look at Jess. He fucked that up, read it completely wrong, and it hurt her, and now she won’t even look him the eye. He can’t do that, can’t think of Tony looking past him and through him and smiling without it reaching his eyes. Can’t think of Tony, standing by a grill, tongs in hand and bullet through his gaping heart and red tide rising around him and dead, dead, dead, _dead because of Clint_

“Clint. _Clint!_ ”

He sucks in a ragged breath, then another. Tony’s here. They’re on his couch. Watching _The Day After Tomorrow_. Tony’s here.

“Sorry,” he says, scrubbing at his face. “Sorry.” Lucky whines, and Clint runs a reassuring hand down his flank. “I’m okay. Good boy.” His hand is shaking. “Good boy.”

“What is going _on_ with you?” Tony demands, clearly shaken. He makes an aborted movement towards Clint, then seems to think better of it, hovering over him. Clint wants to grab him. Pull him in. Curl up in his chest, probably, he doesn’t fucking know.

“My friend died,” he says instead. “There are these – guys. Said they’d fuck everyone up unless I left this building. Left town. And they’re goons, okay, I can’t leave. These are my people. And now one of them is dead.”

He crosses his arms in front of him, then uncrosses them. Squares his shoulders. “I know I’m right. To stay. I need to be here to protect them. They’re not safer with me gone. But I didn’t. I couldn’t protect him.”

There’s not enough air in this room. He breathes again, trying to control it. Deep and long and slowly, slowly out.

“I had to tell his dad. Yesterday. We saved his dad from the flood, just last week, and now his son is dead.”

“Okay,” says Tony. “Okay.” He sits down next to Clint, pressing warmly all down his side, and they sit quietly for a long time.

*

Clint goes to see Natasha, the next day. Her mouth twists when she sees him, and they spar until his limbs are shaking and he doesn’t feel like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin anymore. Then she puts on a black dress and makes him take her to Bed-Stuy, where they check the roof, Grills’ apartment. Clint’s gone over this before. There isn’t a trace.

She bullies him into a nice shirt, then they round up Kate and go for drinks. They tell Natasha about the tracksuit goons – the basement casino, the building, the suspicious shit they’ve been doing. He told Tony last night, so if there’s an electronic trail, JARVIS will pick up on it sooner or later. His own sources are pinging back empty, though, and so are Kate’s; but if anyone finds anything it’s probably going to be Tasha, whose web is as dense as blood.

It can’t be the goons – they’re too stupid, and the murder is too clean, but they must be in it somehow. They have to find out how, now. There isn’t much to go on, but it feels good saying it. It’s just, every time he tells the story, it gets easier to tell.

“You and Tony,” Tasha says after the tension has mostly dissipated, swirling her cocktail glass. It’s classy drinks night with Kate, hence the dress/shirt and cocktails. Other times, they have trashy drinks nights with Clint, which involve liver-searing bathtub liquor and/or beer, while Tasha nights involve expensive vodka from the bottle. “Is it time to threaten bodily harm? I like that part.”

Kate sighs. “There’s no Clint-and-Tony,” she says. “Apparently.”

“But you want there to be.”

“I thought I didn’t,” Clint says morosely.

“Oh, honey.” Kate pats him on the back. It’s completely ineffectual, but he appreciates the thought.

“I might threaten him anyway,” Tasha says thoughtfully.

Clint groans.

“What is it about him?” Kate asks, her voice muffled by Clint’s arms bracketing his head.

“He’s so _fucking_ smart,” Clint says, and it’s true, he wants to taste the smugness on Tony’s tongue, and the vulnerability under that, and then the resounding clang of steel powered by raw powerful shifting heat. “I don’t know,” he says, frustrated. How do you find a word that means Maria, let alone Anthony Edward Stark?

*

And then they – fuck.

He doesn’t even know how it happens.

They’re saving the world, then debriefing, then Tony is saying “do you wanna,” so close up, licking his lips, and Clint _wants_.

“Oh, honey,” Kate says.

They fuck a _lot_.

Sometimes when Clint strips the sheets off his bed he looks at the bare mattress and bile or maybe panic crawls up his throat.

*

He imagines the talk a lot, too.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Clint will say, gesturing. “Us.”

“What us?” Tony will say. “I get it, no questions asked, no hard feelings, right?”

Or, “What is this,” Clint will say, gesturing. “Us.”

“Well, you know, it is what it is, right,” Tony will say with a flash of sympathy/pity, and they’ll stop having spectacular sex and start actually eating their Chinese takeout before it gets cold.

Or, Clint will not say anything and this will go on indefinitely until Tony – something. Fuck if Clint knows.

“So I gotta talk to you, Katniss,” Tony says one day.

Okay.

“Uh, not in the bedroom though, let’s go to the briefing room, c’mon.”

Okay. Okay. Okay.

But Tasha’s there, with Steve, and Bruce. “We found something,” she says. “On the goons. They were completely off-radar for Tony, so we looked for suspiciously tech-free places instead.”

Okay.

“Like bin Laden,” Bruce says, nodding.

Tony pulls up a visual, because of course he does. “Suspiciously signal-free,” he says, and a bunch of blue areas appear on the map. _Suspicious and recent underworld activities_ calls up red splotches and patterns; tracksuit movements are in yellow. There’s a few places where the colours converge. “We checked the surveillance, did a little recon.”

“What did you find?”

“Something you know,” says Natasha. “Cirque du Nuit.”

*

It takes a while, and Clint's covered in blood and scratches and limping a bit, but adrenaline and Iron Man carry him for long enough for him to grin viciously at Grills' dad and tell him, "We got him. We got the bastard who killed Grills."

"Thank you," says Grills' dad heavily, setting down his tongs. He turns to Tony, whose faceplate is down, revealing the same fatigue that Clint feels bone-deep. "Thank you."

They stay for sausages. Tony, even exhausted, can charm anyone, and is soon deep in the midst of a highly involved and boisterous game.

Clint decides to ease his aching legs and back by bracing himself against the parapet, a little way away. A few of his neighbours immediately approach.

"Clint," says Grills' dad, who's evidently been chosen as spokesperson. "It's over now, right?"

Clint nods. "Yeah. It's over. We're safe."

Amelia shifts her baby to a more comfortable position on her hips. "Great, so now you can go," she says.

Clint furrows his brow. "Go where?"

"Go stay with your young man," says Grills' dad. "Be happy. You don't need to protect us anymore."

"Are you kicking me out of my own building," says Clint.

" _Yes_ ," Daphne huffs, "so that you'll stop leaking your pining everywhere and go get him! You've got him already, I don't even know why you're pining."

"I'm the landlord," Clint protests feebly.

"You're coming back for grill night, right?" says Amelia. "We'll save our complaints for then."

“Or ask Katie to tell you,” laughs Daphne. “Preferably in the middle of fighting evil.”

Clint looks over at Tony, ringed by Clint's people, smiling a tired smile at Clint's mad leaping dog, and feels something settle deep in his chest.

*

Clint blinks blearily awake the next afternoon. He's in his bed, curled loosely around Tony, feeling safe for the first time in an age.

"Hey," he mumbles into Tony's neck. "Is that offer still open?"


End file.
